Here's the Secret to NOISE / Grain FREE Images: Rapid Fire Critique

If there is one topic that gets peoples blood boiling it’s the good old cropping one. As I have stated thousands of times before I do not crop my images.

The main reason being is when I shot film back in high school and would raise the enlarger I would see all of the film grain show up. My teacher explained that if you “crop in the camera and not in the darkroom” you would have a much cleaner image.

I have lived with that quote for the last 15+ years even as I went from film to digital to even better digital where you honestly can get away with more cropping.

The reason I am bringing this discussion up again is in the latest Rapid Fire Critique a reader submitted sports images taken with the Canon 5D Mark II. Yes this is a slightly older camera but was one of the biggest revolutions in camera tech history. In one of his images I was asking myself why is there so much noise or grain showing up and the answer was simple, the image was highly cropped.

Like I have said a million times before it’s personal preference, if you want to crop your images go ahead and crop them. But if you’re going to bitch about the noise and the grain and tell me your camera sucks, I will tell you the same thing, STOP CROPPING.

Now let’s get back to this set of images. I couldn’t tell if the vignette was added in post but I find it hard to believe that it wasn’t based on the camera and lens combo.

The images were mostly taken with the 70-200 which is a fantastic lens but may fall short when it comes to shooting sports. The solution could be getting closer or waiting for the action to come to you which ins’t always the best option but still can work.

In the end the images have potential and with some subtle tweaks can be taken to the next level.